5 Inexpensive Ways to Promote Events
Nearly every congregation has “special” events (as if Sunday worship isn’t special!). At Lebanon Road, we have a Vacation Bible School each summer, and we are holding a Gospel Meeting in late September.
One of the challenges that a congregation gives is to invite friends and neighbors to these events. That’s a great challenge, but do we help? We need to give congregations the tools to promote events.
Most congregations make flyers to hang in stores or to canvas certain neighborhoods with. Those are fine, but they must be well done. If you do a poor job with advertising, you are hurting your results instead of helping.
So, here some ways that won’t break the church budget, but that will help you promote those events (or just get the name of your congregation out).
1. Vistaprint.com. Most people who use this website use it for personal business cards, or for cards for their congregation. How about making business cards for those special events? You can get 1000 (including shipping) full color cards for just $19. If you have 250 members, that’s four cards for every person! (By the way, 2000 cards is only $29.)
2. Facebook targeted ads. If you know what demographic you are trying to target most for an event, this is a great tool. Ads can be targeted almost to insanely specific areas (age, gender, relationship status, zip code, school status, etc.). For just a few dollars, you can have that ad “impressed” on hundreds of thousands of Facebook pages within that demographic! You need someone who can design a decent ad, but it is a ton of exposure for very little cost.
3. Twitter. This one takes a little luck sometimes, but it’s (get this) FREE. I have mentioned special services at Lebanon Road on Twitter before, then simply used #Nashville in the tweet. After some time, a local news or “Nashville events” Twitter account has retweeted that information, reaching far more locals than my personal Twitter account. Again, it doesn’t always get mentioned again, but it’s worth the effort for no cost.
4. Children’s cards/letters. Now, let’s get more personal. Who could tell a 4-year-old “no” when the child has personally made a card or letter inviting someone to an event? Not many people!
5. Ask someone. It’s free. It can use technology, but it doesn’t have to. It is a friend being a friend. I know it’s a little old-fashioned, but people still like being invited personally. Ask someone to attend!
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What other inexpensive ways have you found to promote your special events?
6 Comments
Joey Sparks
Good list, man. We try to use many of these ourselves.
If you are a semi-regular customer to VistaPrint & get their email specials, you can get great deals on business cards, postcards (both large & small), vinyl banners, etc. Every time we’ve ordered from them, we’ve gotten the product for free and only paid shipping. If the deal is for 100 free postcards, you can place one order multiple times, use different accounts, etc. to make it highly affordable.
A secondary Twitter app like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck is a great tool for reminder posts because of their ability to schedule posts in the future. When we had a youth event back in November, I spent about 30 minutes scheduling simultaneous posts to the church Facebook page and youth Twitter account (which our kids use to get text message announcements) for the entire week leading up to the event. I scheduled some for 7:15-7:30 AM challenging them to invite friends that day at school. Kept me from having to set the time aside and (more importantly) remember to do it every time.
David Shearer
Great article Adam,
Here is one thing that we have done in the past with success. We had some generic cards printed. They were blank on the inside. On the front was a picture of our meeting place. These were great they could be used for a variety of purposes. Thank you card, we missed you notes, thanks for coming, etc. For a meeting each of our members would take a handful and mail invitations to their friends and family.
Just thought I would pass this a long. Have a great one brother.
Adam Faughn
Joey, Great points at Vistaprint. I’m new to them, but I really like what they offer. Also, the “timed” Tweets are a great point!
David, You are doing such a wonderful work in Marshalltown, and I know you have helped many folks there. The blank cards are a great idea for a congregation of any size! Keep up your great work!!!
Mike (Kiwi) Raine
There is a church that grew to several thousand without every advertising or promoting. The book is called, “Sticky Church” by Larry Osborne. He talks about closing the back door and how to keep what you have and attract new comings. Too many of us have bigger back doors than front doors. An excellent read.
God Bless; Kiwi Mike
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